The NYT has an investigative piece on the $140 million a year organization called “Dairy Management.” It recently teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign, says the Times. Who is this organization? Well, it’s a “marketing creation” of the US Department of Agriculture.

From the NYT (emphasis ours):

Consider the Taco Bell steak quesadilla, with cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and a creamy sauce. “The item used an average of eight times more cheese than other items on their menu,” the Agriculture Department said in a report, extolling Dairy Management’s work — without mentioning that the quesadilla has more than three-quarters of the daily recommended level of saturated fat and sodium.

The article says that most of the money comes from a fee on dairy industry, and the program’s success is measured by the amount of cheese being consumed.

The article is fascinating, particularly the part about what happens to all the leftover milk fat and whole milk. Most Americans (I am not one of them, I love whole milk.) prefer skim or 2% milk.

“A vast amount of leftover whole milk and extracted milk fat results,” says the Times. The government apparently used to actually store the excess in caves in Missouri. Weird.

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The NYT has an investigative piece on the $140 million. It recently teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign, says the Times

Meg, that first paragraph is extremely confusing.

a) What $140 Million? The way the article refers to it, it presumes that “$140 Million” is referenced somewhere earlier in the headline.

b) “it recently teamed up with Dominos” – Who did? The New York Times?

I think it’s great. Great integrated marketing campaign. We all know that some uses for cheese aren’t as healthy as others, but the money is meant to sell cheese, not convince Americans to lose weight!!

They would. Gross. Thankfully, I make my own pizzas at home with the brokeassgourmet.com dough recipe, and can regulate my family’s cheese intake.
The real question is, can I get a tour of this cheese cave?

Haha, I knew this was coming… I actually grew up drinking 1%, the oddball of milk. Then I tried Skimplus, then skim. I guess I’m just used to it now, doesn’t taste watery anymore, and I get to feel superior for drinking the healthier choice. ;)

Skim Plus is made by Farmland dairies. It’s Skim but tastes richer than store brand slim. Per Farmland:

Our Special Request line of products are produced with additional protein and calcium to give fat free and low fat dairy products great creamy taste with less fat. All of our Special Request products are made from 100% real milk sourced from cows that were not treated with rBST hormones or antibiotics. The Plus is in the Taste!

Have you tried going to a dairy? We’ve been long time skim drinkers, but when we run out of milk between deliveries, I have to get 1 or 2% – the dairy skim tastes like milk while the megamart skim tastes like stale water.

Is it odd that I LOVE 1%, but I don’t like 2% at all… i can only use it in cereal.

Maybe I was a fat baby, I’m not sure, but the doctor told my mother to put me on 1% milk when I was young, so that’s what I still drink today.

I’m 33, and I still LOVE milk… my last two girlfriends made fun of me for how much I loved/still love milk. They don’t drink it hardly at all… If I got up at like 2am, and wanted milk, and there was none, I’d drive to the grocery store to go get it… because it seems like everywhere but the NorthEast doesn’t sell 1% in the local gas stations anymore, which is annoying, but a digression… i just had to have me some milk sometimes!

What an awesome return on investment. They spend 12 million to promote this pizza, and think of the taxes they reap from the sale/production of said pizza, from income tax, to tariffs, to fuel taxes, to sales tax, etc…

For once the government did something smart and spent a little to help make a lot for everyone, including themselves.

I tend to agree…. I thought I was going to get pissed about the government spending $140 mil to prop up one industry, but the article shows that the vast majority of that comes from fees paid by dairy farmers.

You realize, that the government is nothing but a 3rd party between consumers and producers. They add no value to anything: they collect taxes and spend. That is about it.
People will argue the government builds roads, schools and other necessities, but it’s not true. There are no construction workers who work in government (maybe a hand full). Most of the work is contracted out to private companies.

The question should be, is the government spending OUR money wisely? In MOST cases, it’s no: there is a lot of fraud, theft and unaccountable spending. I’ll take a wild guess and say that less than 1/2 our tax dollars are spent on projects which benefit our society. The rest is wasted on good intentions gone bad, fraud, waste and theft.

I say the cheese program is a combination of waste, mis-guided ideas, theft and a dash of good intention.

I knew it! There’s sooo much cheese blowing up in fast foods these days, I thought to myself “there’s got to be an industry surplus of cheese that a number of industries are consolidating efforts to go through.”

I also thought of cheese as sort of the “new” french fries. It’s this pile of delicious fat that’s super cheap, but adds a lot of value and appeal to foods. Restaurants just pile it on everything, and everyone is happy.

The article is very interesting, especially the part at the end about Dairy Management basically creating junk science to claim that consuming dairy can help you lose weight, while suppressing all the science that contradicts that.

In the documentary ‘the World According to Monsanto,’ it was revealed that during the 80’s, I think, the FDA was suppressing studies that showed the dangers of Bovine Growth Hormone because of the profits that were involved. Nice to hear things haven’t changed.

So, promoting new home sales with a tax credit, new car sales with an incentive program, giving away $300 to every taxpayer…that doesn’t do any selling? Face it, the government has its hands on almost any item that is for sale.

It’s a $12 million campaign to promote cheese not, as the article and headlines imply, a $12 million campaign to promote Domino’s. The dairy industry is heavily regulated AND PROTECTED by government with guaranteed prices and sales levels. We are already paying for this excess cheese so we may as well eat it.

while i agree with the sentiment that it is absurd that our government is both spending money to encourage us to drink lowfat milk and eat more full fat cheese there is some care mongering going on in this article.

Of course a quesadilla has more cheese than a taco. Cheese is its main ingredient. The very nature of the dish accounts for the higher amount of cheese. That’s like comparing a grilled cheese to a cheeseburger and being shocked that there is a lot more cheese in one than the other.

I am not surprised at all. America’s food pyramid was set by a government group. If you look at food subsidies, most go into the bovine industry. That’s why hamburger meat is cheap but veggies aren’t. The whole cheese thing promotes more cow-use.

Yet meat is one of the smallest items on the Food pyramid. How does that work?

And where the fuck are you finding ground beef that’s cheaper than Veggies? Or do you only buy from the farmer’s market or Whole Paycheck foods?

I go to HEB (Grocery chain in Central Texas) and most fresh fruit and veggies are half the price of a pound of ground beef…even the ultra fatty stuff. The only exception is the stuff that’s out of season or specialty items. I can buy Broccoli, green beans, peppers, onions, Tomatoes, Potatoes all less /lb than Ground Beef.

Dairy comes from cows.
And it is cheaper to eat more hamburger meat than veggies.

Also, I am familiar with HEB prices and they are pretty amazing. And I will contend that food prices in Texas are MUCH friendlier than the two areas I have lived- Southeast and Upstate NY. I have no idea why.

I’m curious where the “get government out of our lives” commentators are on this article. Typically, I disagree with that stance, but I’m simply flabbergasted that the feds are spending time marketing cheese. Wouldn’t those bureaucrats be better off spending their time trying to figure out how to say, fix the education system or lower obesity rates, rather than how to produce and manage these “marketing creations”? I’m sure the nation’s cheese producers can come up with a way to market themselves, and are probably just as good at coming up with their own bunk science!

Our government shouldn’t be in the marketing business, especially when what they’re selling directly contradicts the long-term benefit of our people. I say drop the levy on dairy farmers, get rid of Dairy Management and let the Department of Agriculture do what it is should be doing: fighting obesity.

Phil from Dominoâ€™s Pizza here. Wanted to clear up one thing: 100% of these dollars come from America’s Dairy Farmers and our partnership with Dairy Management, Inc. — not the U.S. government or taxpayer money. This is U.S. Dairy Farmers using their money and resources to partner with us in promoting cheeseâ€¦something we have in common through this partnership we are very proud of!

Meg, I have to agree with you: I read the article on Sunday morning, and I was thinking about caves in Missouri filled with $4 billion worth of cheese all day. Sometimes, our country is really quite fascinating.

Anybody who’s surprised by this simply hasn’t been paying attention for the last 224 years.

There are also US governmental organizations dedicated to *increasing* the number of people on welfare. And there are many, many governmental organizations dedicated to decreasing Liberty — i.e., actively working against the primary cultural value of the USA.

Government is too big, and is demonstrably unmanageable. Perhaps we could place most of the power and responsibility into the hands of the 50 states? Where have I heard that before?

The problem with adding to the welfare roles is it is unsustainable. The reason corporations want more people on welfare, is the same reason we have farm subsidies (See Food Inc.). Farmers can’t make money selling their crops at market rates, so the government subsidizes farmers. Private industry then takes this subsidy by charging the farmers. It would be more efficient if government simply gave the big corporation the money directly, but politicians know people would not stand for this. In other words, it’s easy to support farmers and poor people, not big corporations.

…so diary gurus store the excess in caves in Missouri. They stack this up for decades, then human civilization ends, and humans vanish from the Earth. The caves are discovered millions of years later by the creatures that replace us, and they stumble across an exposed layer of milk fats oozing from the ground. How do their scientists explain that?